Jackson: No, I'm Not Lenient on Child Porn

Monday was the preliminaries. On Tuesday, Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson began taking questions from senators on the judicial panel. Some early highlights, per the AP:

• Jackson forcefully defended her record as a federal judge and declared she will rule "from a position of neutrality” if she is confirmed as the first Black woman on the high court.
• She pushed back on Republican suggestions that she has given light sentences to child pornographers. Could her rulings have endangered children? “As a mother and a judge,” she said, “nothing could be further from the truth." GOP Sen. Josh Hawley made the accusation on Monday, notes the Hill.
• When addressing offenders, “I tell them about the adults who are former child sex abuse victims, (who) tell me that they will never have a normal adult relationship because of this abuse," she said. "I tell them about the ones who say, 'I went into prostitution, I fell into drugs because I was trying to suppress the hurt that was done to me as an as an infant.'"

• She seemed to bristle at questions from South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who asked her about her religion and how often she goes to church, in comments about what he said was unfair criticism of Justice Amy Coney Barrett's Catholicism ahead of her 2020 confirmation. Jackson—who thanked God in her opening statement and said that her faith “sustains me at this moment"—responded that she is a Protestant. But she said she is reluctant to talk about her faith in detail because "I want to be mindful of the need for the public to have confidence in my ability to separate out my personal views."
• Jackson answered questions right off the bat that attempted to deflect GOP concerns and also highlight the empathetic style that she has frequently described when she is handing down sentences. Jackson told the committee that her brother and two uncles served as police officers, and "crime and the effect on the community, and the need for law enforcement—those are not abstract concepts or political slogans to me.”

(More Ketanji Brown Jackson stories.)